The Australian Library Journal

Slouching towards Bethlehem

[Editorial] John Levett
Australia is lurching 'like some rough beast, its time come round at last' to yet another election, and whatever the outcome, it seems certain that the members for disillusionment will be elected to one or more critical seats in both federal houses. There seems to be a growing view that the country has lost sight of itself, and that in the globalisation that we apparently have to have, there is no room for those particular attributes that we took, for a long time, to distinguish what it was we meant when we said: 'I am an Australian'. Openness; fairness; equity; equality of opportunity; transparency of process; bosses and workers closely involved with the task and with each other; works picnics; social clubs; service clubs; the principle of making a due return to the community; religious observance; national service in its broadest sense.

All are gone, eroded, or in retreat before the onslaught of 'world's best practice'; 'globalisation', or rolling out of sight down the slope of the 'level playing field'. With these changes has gone the notion that government was for the benefit of the governed, that it was a natural role for government to serve its constituency, provide public services free at the transaction point, that education should be freely and equally available to all, along with a certain basic level of health care, and eventually, a pension that if not quite a living wage, would at least provide a comfortable retirement for those who had not made, or been able to make, their own provision.

The age of which we speak was not a golden age, and had its own limitations and restrictions, its narrownesses; but it was not, for all that, an uncaring age. We know that the clock cannot be turned back; but we also see that the wheel can be constantly re-invented. If we needed evidence for that we only have to look at the endlessly rotating cycles of reconstruction and 'reform' of organisations and society. In the midst of unremitting change, disruption and fracturing, the service professions, of which we are still in large measure one, although the balance is shifting, strive to find a balance.

ALIA is presently undergoing such a struggle; it has, for reasons which at the time of writing are unclear, but which will no doubt be revealed, turned its back on the extended negotiations with ACLIS. The Leadership Committee appointed to oversee the process of reconstruction, and in which so much hope had been reposed has chosen to dissolve itself after ALIA or at least its General Council, had resolved to proceed alone through the process of constructing a new organisation for the next two decades. Which is about as long in the past as ALIA seems to have existed at a time without reconstructing itself all over again.

The hinge of its success or otherwise in this process of renewal will be the extent to which it is able to satisfy the institutions, a significant proportion of which had given their effective allegiance, resources and leadership over the last twenty years or so to a range of organisations culminating in ACLIS. ALIA will have to develop this new axis without losing focus on the need to provide for its extant constituencies. It will have to persuade into effective participation those institutions whose primary reason for belonging to ALIA hitherto has been the ILL voucher system; and whose hearts and minds have not yet, perhaps, been wholly won over.

It will also need to come to terms once more with the notion of an executive committee, which had been emasculated in the embrace of democracy in the last major reconstruction in 1976. That committee will necessarily, if it is to be capable of rapid and effective and response to exigencies, acquire de jure the powers and authority of the General Council. Persuading the membership that this is an acceptable delegation will be at least as challenging an undertaking as drawing in the institutional membership which has so far, and for whatever reasons, chosen to remain outside the ALIA orbit.

The executive committee and the General Council itself will need membership of the highest and most experienced quality that can be obtained in this process of renewal; and, dare we say, will need to have an eye for history if it is not to repeat the more egregious follies of the past. The fascinating processes of corporate onanism must be abjured, as must the inextinguishable temptation for the General Council to administer the Association, so as to liberate the time and energies demanded by the changing strategic scenario. Above all, the General Council must move with absolute transparency in order to avoid any action which would imbue the membership at large with the cynicism and suspicion with which Australians presently regard the broader political process.

Some of the actions which are presently contemplated by General Council must be conveyed to the membership in terms which do not admit of ambiguity, misinterpretation or [even] deliberate misconstruction. Major changes to policy, if they are not to be seen as the exigent manoeuverings of restless and unfulfilled egos, rather than cerebral and considered evolution of policy, philosophy or direction will need to be carefully rationalised to those members who had entertained the highest hopes for the work of the Leadership Committee. These members had listened carefully to the Gardini rationale, and had participated with good faith in the processes of rationalisation and reconstruction consequent on the decision to bring ACLIS into conjunction with ALIA as the foundation for a new peak body.

The real reasons for abandoning these processes without consultation must be conveyed to them as a matter of urgency. They must also be offered the option to direct or redirect the General Council if they are not persuaded of the validity of its actions in closing down the processes of negotiation inter pares. Those who have the job of representing the actions of General Council to the membership will need large reserves of energy and diplomacy if this task is to be effectively carried out and the projected reconstruction of ALIA properly begun.

In this issue, we are privileged to run a major 'wake-up call' in the shape of a strategic review of the Australian IT scenario developed by GartnerGroup Pacific. It is the most significant review of its kind we have seen in recent years. Whether it will have any impact on a totally distracted government will remain to be seen. Patricia Willard and Maxine Rochester examine the information needs of a sample of community organisations in NSW; Michael Heim gives us this quarter's student contribution, and a very good one it is too. We also print an interview with the knowledge-management gurus Davenport and Prusak, both known to our readers, and conclude with an outstanding crop of book reviews, with our usual acknowledgment to Gary Gorman, our reviews editor. In our next issue we hope to repair our debt to Australian library history, a field somewhat neglected in these pages of late.